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June 5, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership :
Meet the ‘partners’
If fast track passes Congress, the first
NAFTA-style pact up for approval
would be the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
a proposed agreement between the
United States and 11 other Pacific Rim
nations: Australia, Brunei, Canada,
Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New
Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Viet-
nam. The United States already has
trade agreements with Mexico,
Canada, Australia, Chile, Peru, and
Singapore. Japan and New Zealand are
on par with the United States in work-
ers’ rights and living standards. But the
three others—Vietnam, Malaysia, and
Brunei—are human rights violators
where workers lack basic rights. The
following is from the most recent an-
nual human rights reports from the
U.S. State Department.
Vietnam
Vietnam is an authoritarian one-party
state ruled by the Communist Party of
Vietnam. Citizens face severe govern-
ment restrictions on their
political rights. The gov-
ernment doesn’t permit
human rights organiza-
tions to operate. All print,
broadcast, and electronic
media are controlled by
the Communist Party and
the government. Foreign journalists
are limited in their movements and are
sometimes harassed by security offi-
cials. Police arrest and detain people
for political activities, and sometimes
use contract thugs and citizen brigades
to harass and beat political activists.
The government doesn’t permit polit-
ical demonstrations. There are restric-
tions on strikes, but they do sometimes
...Fast Track
From Page 1
locked and loaded, ready for
Congress to pull the trigger.
The U.S. Constitution gives
Congress, not the president, the
power to regulate commerce
with foreign nations. It also re-
quires that international treaties
be approved by a two-thirds ma-
jority of the U.S. Senate. Fast
track is an end run around those
things: It delegates trade treaty
negotiations to the president,
and lets the president submit im-
plementing legislation which
must then be voted on within 90
days, with limited debate and no
amendments allowed. And the
trade deal passes with a simple
majority, not the supermajority
occur, especially at foreign-invested
enterprises. Official Communist Party
unions do function as unions in some
respects, but the law does not allow
workers to organize and join independ-
ent unions of their choice.
Malaysia
Malaysia, ruled by a political coalition
in continuous power since 1957, is
classed by the U.S. State Department
as one of the
worst coun-
tries in the
world for forced labor and human traf-
ficking. Its government has failed to
comply with the most basic interna-
tional requirements to prevent traffick-
ing and protect victims. There are also
restrictions on freedoms of speech, as-
sembly, association, and religion, and
restrictions on freedom of the press, in-
cluding book banning, censorship, and
the denial of printing permits.
Malaysia’s legal system punishes more
than 60 offenses by caning, in which
convicts are sentenced to be struck
with a half-inch-thick wooden cane
that may cause welts and scarring. In
theory, Malaysian workers have the
right to organize and bargain collec-
tively, and strike. In practice, they face
a multitude of legal restrictions that se-
verely restrict union rights. Legal re-
strictions make it virtually impossible
for workers to go on strike lawfully,
and union leaders face up to a year in
prison for striking unlawfully. Workers
in whole industries, such as the elec-
tronics sector, are barred from forming
independent unions. And foreign
workers—who make up a quarter of
the workforce—are barred from join-
required for a treaty or even for
regular legislation under the
Senate’s filibuster rule.
Under the direction of Presi-
dent Barack Obama, the U.S.
has been secretly negotiating a
new NAFTA-style trade treaty
with Pacific Rim nations—for
six years. According to the fast
track bill, Congress now dictates
after the fact, in vague terms,
what the president was sup-
posed to be bargaining for.
Call Congress
Dial the AFL-CIO Trade Hot-
line to be patched through to
your Congressperson: 1-855-
712-8441. Ask your representa-
tive to please stand with their
constituents and oppose Fast
Track for the Trans-Pacific Part-
nership.
ing unions. Foreign workers—preva-
lent in plantation agriculture, the fish-
ing industry, electronics factories, gar-
ment production, construction,
restaurants, and domestic house-
holds—suffer widespread abuses in-
dicative of forced labor, such as re-
strictions on movement, deceit and
fraud in wages, passport confiscation,
and imposition of significant debts by
recruitment agents or employers. In
many cases where those abuses are re-
ported to the authorities, the foreign
workers have been arrested and sent to
a detention camp for not being in pos-
session of a valid travel document.
Brunei
Brunei, a tiny oil-producing nation on
the island of Borneo, is ruled by a
hereditary monarch, Sultan Haji Has-
sanal Bolkiah, whose family has ruled
for more than 600
years. In Brunei, it’s
illegal to challenge
the royal family’s
authority, and the
government’s internal security appara-
tus uses informants to monitor sus-
pected dissidents. According to the
U.S. State Department, Brunei limits
freedom of speech, press, assembly,
and religion. Public gatherings of 10
or more persons require a government
permit, and police have the authority
to stop an unofficial assembly of five
or more persons. The government
practices censorship of newspapers,
and can close newspapers and seize
printing presses, and the only TV sta-
tion is government owned. There’s no
freedom of association. Islam is the
state religion. Caning is a mandatory
punishment. Muslims are prohibited
from joining Rotary, Kiwanis, and the
Lions. Unions are allowed, but there’s
only one union, in the petroleum sec-
tor, and strikes are illegal.
DÉJÀ VU?
Why claims about the “unprecedented”
labor and environmental protections of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership sound so familiar
“T
he North American Free Trade
Agreement [NAFTA] is the first
agreement that ever really got any teeth in
environmental standards, any teeth in
what another country had to do with its
own workers and its own labor stan-
dards… There’s never been anything like
this before.”
— Bill Clinton, 1993
“C
AFTA has the strongest labor and
environmental provisions of any
trade agreement ever negotiated by the
United States. CAFTA is light years ahead
of NAFTA, more practical and effective
than current law, and is far stronger than
earlier agreements.” — Rob Portman,
Bush’s trade representative, 2005
“T
his [Korea Free Trade] agreement
includes groundbreaking protections
for workers’ rights and for the environment.
In this sense, it’s an example of the kind of
fair trade agreement that I will continue to
work for as president, in Asia and around
the world.”
— Barack Obama, 2010
“T
his [Trans-Pacific Partnership] will
end up being the most progressive
trade bill in history. It will have the kinds of
labor and environmental and human rights
protections that have been absent in previ-
ous agreements.” — Barack Obama, 2015
Source: “Broken Promises: Decades of
Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in
Free Trade Agreements,” prepared by the
staff of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, available
online at http://bit.ly/1KIEPvn
FAST TRACK: How your Senators voted
Wyden is up for re-election next
year. Corporate funders will re-
member his crucial role in pass-
ing Fast Track. Will you?
Fast Track passed the U.S. Sen-
ate 62 to 37 on May 22. Oregon
Democrat Jeff Merkley voted
no, but Oregon Democrat Ron
Wyden voted for it, and so did
Washington Democrats Maria
Cantwell and Patty Murray.
Before the fateful vote, sena-
tors also voted on a number of
amendments aimed at lessening
the damage to American work-
ers.
An amendment by Rob Port-
man (R-Ohio) and Debbie
Stabenow (D-Mich.) would
have required future trade agree-
ments to have enforceable pro-
visions against currency manip-
ulation by foreign partners. It
failed by 48 to 51. Merkley
voted yes. Wyden, Cantwell,
and Murray voted no.
Instead, the Senate adopted
an alternative authored by
Wyden and Orrin Hatch (R-
Utah)—a non-binding directive
calling on the president to hold
trading partners accountable for
currency manipulation and to
use reporting, monitoring and
cooperative mechanisms. It
passed 62-37. Merkley voted
no. Wyden, Cantwell, Murray
voted yes.
Elizabeth Warren sponsored
an amendment that would
negate the fast track process for
any trade pact that included a
so-called Investor State Dispute
Settlement process, in which
corporations can directly sue
governments. It failed 39-60.
Merkley, Cantwell and Murray
voted yes. Wyden voted no.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-
Ohio), another leader of the
Democratic caucus’s “fair-
trade” wing, sponsored an
amendment to require prior con-
gressional approval before other
countries, like China, could be
added to the group. It failed 47-
52. Wyden, Cantwell, Murray
voted no. Merkley voted yes.